The project, which raised $200,000 out of the gate through microfunding site Kickstarter, has had trouble raising additional money of late and cited problems with PayPal allowing donations to go through. Although Diaspora has been designed as an alternative to commercial social network sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has been complimentary of the project and donated to it, calling it a "cool idea" during a Wired.com interview.

Here's how Diaspora's team described their effort in their original Kickstarter pitch:

We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive. With Diaspora, we are reclaiming our data, securing our social connections, and making it easy to share on your own terms. We think we can replace today's centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network. Diaspora will be easy to use, and it will be centered on you instead of a faceless hub.

The Google+ technique for grouping friends into private "Circles" is similar to Diaspora's method of allowing users to group other users into closed "Aspects" for private sharing.

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